On Saturday mornings, James babysits his nephew Tyler. Tyler is fascinated by meerkats and watches every documentary he can abou
t the animals. Tyler always talks for hours about what meerkats eat, how they live together in families, and how they watch out for predators. One Saturday, Tyler is very excited. “I told my mom I want a pet meerkat. She said I can’t have one because they’re wild animals. But ferrets are pets and they look a lot like meerkats, so they must be cousins!”
He shows James how similar they look in pictures of a meerkat and a ferret.
Two illustrations with one of a domesticated ferret (Mustela putorius furo) and the second a meerkat (Suricata suricatta) both looking somewhat similar and sitting in the same position.
James searches online and discovers that meerkats and ferrets are not even in the same family. Ferrets are in a family with otters, badgers, weasels, and wolverines. Meerkats are in a different family with mongooses.
If meerkats and ferrets are in different families, why do they look so similar?
A. Species from two different families can be very closely related.
B. Two unrelated species can evolve similar characteristics through convergent evolution.
C. Classification is an evolving process and the two animals are actually in the same family.
D. The two species have the same binomial nomenclature.
